


Ain't Got Far To Go

by jencsi



Category: CSI: Crime Scene Investigation
Genre: Gen, Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-10
Updated: 2021-02-10
Packaged: 2021-03-16 23:14:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,292
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29340387
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jencsi/pseuds/jencsi
Summary: Finn's first day back at work since the coma.
Comments: 3
Kudos: 5





	Ain't Got Far To Go

Monday September 7th 2015, 

Her leg bounces up and down nervously as she sits in the visitors lounge, the room where they send distraught families and victims to for questioning without an interrogation feel to the conversation. She taps the pen back and forth, sometimes hitting the table with it, other times just letting it free fall back and forth in the air. The documents in front of her are five pages long. A second set of paperwork is only two but both are causing her unwanted stress. 

“I know you know this stuff,” Ecklie says as he shuffles the papers into a proper order “this is just a technicality.”

Finn nods and chokes back the tart reply she wishes to snap back at him because this meeting is more important than anything she’s done in the last few months. It was hard to believe she was unconscious for three months, then another three doing recovery, half this year gone, and now fall was about to arrive, save for reducing the sweltering Vegas temperatures, and she was just now allowed to return to her livelihood. 

Enough tests, enough hospital trips, enough of being poked and prodded and questions and she had certainly had enough of people asking her if she was okay. The sooner she could be back in a crime scene with evidence markers abound and a puzzle to solve, she would feel like herself quickly. 

Ecklie pushed the paper stack towards her then abandoned his seat, slipping out of the room so she could work in peace. The title of the papers labeled basic entrance exam boiled her blood and left her feeling bitter. Nevertheless, she sat up in her chair and began to fill out each bubble, each box and each short worded answer. Within half an hour, she was finished. She presented the exam to Ecklie who graded it right in front of her while she continued to fidget in her seat, spinning, rocking, tapping, rolling the pen around. Ecklie looked up from the papers to give her a look but then a smile, nothing had changed about this spirited investigator in six months, despite a serial killer’s best attempts to take her life. Don’t play with fire, he couldn’t help but think of the defeated Winthrope, she’ll burn you. 

Finn tried to be patient, but this was taking too long. She sighed and made it obvious she was annoyed but that was not going to make Ecklie grade the test faster. On the final page flip, he made a circle with the pen in his hand across the paper and smiled. 

“All right,” he concluded “all is well here, as I expected, did you resubmit your CCW permit?”

“Yes,” she said politely, patting the bag in which her gun resided.

“Firearms passed you at eighty seven percent but I expect that to be higher in the next six months, understood?” Ecklie continued. 

Finn nodded, feeling a dryness in her throat, the anticipation torturing her. 

“Supervisor Russell deemed you qualified to rejoin the team,” Ecklie said “do you agree with his assessment?”

“Yes,” Finn said, forcing herself not to roll her eyes. 

“Do you have any questions for me?” Ecklie added.

Yeah can you shut up now? Finn mentally thought, smiling smugly as she answered politely again “Not at the moment,” 

“All right,” Ecklie said, collecting the papers and stacking them together. He reached into his suit jacket pocket and pulled out a leather badge, sliding it across the table to her. When she caught it, her fingers touched the plastic cover that held her identification badge and lab photo. The first photo from her very first day here was tucked behind it. She felt a slight pain in her chest when she saw how curly her hair was back then. Fast forward to the photo currently residing in the slot, one that had been taken in January of two thousand fifteen, shortly before her attack. She stared at her own meek smile in the photo. She had started to flat iron her hair a few months before and was somewhat pleased with the effect. The sight of herself in this picture, of worlds unknown, how simple, how naive she was to how she was now, after the attack, after the coma, after learning everything all over again while fighting to put pieces of her life together. It was an odd disconnect. 

Ecklie watched her, studying her own picture, wondering what was going on in her head. 

“If you want to redo that, we can,” he offered her, thinking it was the photo itself that bothered her. 

“No,” she said shaking her head “it’s fine, it’s just, I didn’t know you had this, thank you for keeping it safe.”

“Couldn’t really let it go,” Ecklie said sadly “that would have meant accepting something my heart didn’t want to.” 

The words he chose made something in her heart ache, he cared more than he let on. 

“Good to have you back kid,” he concluded as he reached across the table and offered her a handshake as if he was hiring her for the first time.

As weird as it was to hear him call her kid, she accepted the handshake and smiled, genuinely happy to be back. 

Ecklie collected the paperwork and tucked it into a manila folder, giving it to her with instructions to take them to Russell for filing and then to pick up her assignment for the evening. 

Finn took the ID badge and tucked it in against the waistband of her jeans, the familiar spot that allowed the badge to rest comfortably on her hip. She scooped up her bag and swung it over her shoulder, cradling the folder of paperwork in her free arm. Walking the lab hallways brought back such a sense of security. The smells of metal and plastic mingled with various chemicals for tests and procedures. The sights of colleagues working on evidence, processing pieces, figuring out who was responsible for the violence that surrounded them. The evening sun was creeping through the glass windows that always made the place look blue in color, a feature she adored about this place. 

Reaching Russells office, she tapped softly on the door frame, seeing him hunched over the desk, reading some files. When he looked up and saw her, he smiled and waved her inside. 

“All done being tortured by Ecklie I see,” Russell teased her.

“It wasn’t so bad,” she admitted, handing him the manila folder “he asked you to file this.”

“Thanks,” Russell said, tucking the folder under the pile on his desk. 

Finn shifted on her feet, waiting for the conversation to turn to work or the usual “You okay?” he offered her on the daily since her reawakening. 

Russell sipped his tea mug, aware that she was still standing there. 

“Oh, that’s right,” he said, shifting the papers on his desk and handing her a slip “I don’t have much for you tonight, Nick and Sara are working on something, Greg and Morgan are preparing a case for court, I suppose the B and E on Sunset is the most excitement for tonight.”

“On it,” she promised him, feeling uplifted and relieved to be doing something with her active mind and restless body. 

“Hang on,” Russell said as she turned on her heel to leave “let me walk with you, I have to drop something off for Hodges to review.” 

Finn allowed him to walk alongside her out of the office and down the hallway. The silence between them was awkward and she knew he was still leery of pushing her too far with questions about her health, her mood, her emotional stability. Truth be told she was still figuring out some of those feelings after all these months. As they rounded the corner that took them down the hallway to Hodges lab and workspace, the door to the trace lab opened and she collided with it, face first, the doorframe smacking her right on the forehead. Down she went. 

The first thing she heard was a pathetic blabbing of an apology “I’m so sorry, I didn’t even see you guys.” The second thing she heard was a hiss of “Be quiet” then her own name called softly, gently “Jules,”

“What?” she called back to the voice, opening her eyes and seeing faces swimming in front of her, blurry for a moment then coming into a clear focus. 

“No,” she whimpered realizing what happened, she took the blow from the door and had ended up on the ground, brain powered down for an unknown amount of time, only to awaken and see her colleagues hovering over her. 

“It’s okay,” Russell soothed her, patting her shoulder and she discovered she was laying down on the couch in his office. 

“What did you do?” she complained, touching her hand to her head. 

“Nothing,” Russell explained “we just uh, needed to make sure you were okay, Doc.”

Russell called for Doc Robbins who was also hovering nearby. The fuss was making her anxious and worried, she had just been through this and now it was happening again? 

“I’m fine,” she insisted, pushing at them with her hands, “don’t.”

She protested whatever was coming her way, a test, questions, worse still, the dizziness she felt when she attempted to sit up. She cursed, moaning as she was forced to lay back down against the pillows, tired of this position of rest, of helplessness. 

“Easy,” Russell soothed her. 

“Do you remember what happened?” Doc asked her now.

“I hit the stupid door,” Finn snapped, nursing her sore forehead, angry that the pain was throbbing at the back of her head too, when was it ever going to end? 

“I’m so sorry,” Hodges blubbered again, craning his neck to see over Russell and Doc Robbins. 

“It was you,” Finn remembered “you opened the door?”

Hodges stammered incoherent words as he held his hands up apologetically, clearly distraught over his mistake. 

“Maybe we should call the hospital,” Russell insisted “a blow to the head so soon after everything from February.”

“No!” Finn lashed out at them “I’m fine, I swear, I just need to-

She tried to sit up again but felt a wave of nausea hit her and the room spun, terrifyingly so. 

“Kill you,” she muttered to Hodges as she slumped back against the pillows again, defeated. 

Hodges trembled, falling silent, no apology could make up for this. 

“Watch her,” Russell instructed the lab tech as he vacated the space with Doc Robbins, whispering about Finn’s condition and possible ways to treat her without forcing her back to the hospital. 

Hodges sank down in the chair next to the couch, twitching nervously when he saw Finn sigh and close her eyes. 

“Hey, I don’t think that’s a good idea,” he chastised her moment of rest “you might have a concussion.”

Finn turned her head and stared at him with a look of hatred and anger. He crouched in the chair, defeated, hating himself for what he did. 

“I was so close,” she sobbed now “I had a case and everything.”

She winced and sobbed again, tired of pain, tired of feeling faint, weak, lost, broken. 

“I’m sure Russell will be back any minute,” Hodges changed the subject, addressing her emotions was not something he was prepared to do. 

“Whatever,” Finn scoffed, turning on her side, her back to him, ignoring him, hating him, wanting to be left alone. 

“Listen, I uh, I really am sorry,” he confessed. “I had no idea anyone was walking by, it was just, accident.”

He stumbled, trying to find the right words. 

“They’re never gonna let me work again,” she lashed out, sniffling, arms curled up against her body, savoring the softness of the couch. 

“Yes they will,” Hodges encouraged her softly “stuff like this happened all the time, Captain Brass was shot, he still came back, Sara broke her arm, she came back, Nick, he came back after his, you know, thing, Greg got beat to a pulp by that gang and he came back, they always do.”

Finn turned back over to face him as she asked coolly “Did you hit them with a door on their first day back?”

“No,” Hodges said bluntly knowing she was never going to let him forget this “but they struggled too, Sara had that cast for weeks, Nick, I know he didn’t talk about it but stuff bothered him, bugs, darkness, small spaces, Greg was just sad, not his usual funny self, all those bruises, Brass got this tattoo, or so I’ve heard, it might just be a rumor, lab gossip, you know-

“Hodges,” Finn stopped him, rubbing her temples in agony of his voice and the injury. 

The tech was silenced, shifting in his seat uncomfortably. 

“The point is,” Hodges continued in a softer tone of voice “nothing keeps people down here, they keep going, it’s just, the nature of this place.” 

Finn stared at him, realizing he was right about persistence and perseverance amongst her colleagues. Things she had not been here for but loomed in the shadows of these walls and hallways. Something dark always threatened them but something bigger and stronger chased that away, willpower. She pressed the palm of her hand to her forehead which was aching, a painful reminder of how fragile her life was despite all the recklessness with which she ran at life with, full speed. 

“So what do I do now?” she asked Hodges in a meek tone, feeling like a child, helpless, lost, scared. 

Hodges did a half shrug, hunching his shoulders, pressing the palms of his hands together, nervous, but sturdy as he answered her with a firm “Persist”

**Author's Note:**

> I would classify this as a silly story because I have a more serious version of Finn's "back to work" story in the works. 
> 
> Timeline of events-February 15th 2015- attack and subsequent coma.   
> May 15th 2015- awakens from coma.   
> June 2015- allowed to return home.   
> September 2015- allowed to start work again. 
> 
> Title is a song and implies that she doesn't have far to go to find trouble but also friends.


End file.
